Spam messages are those unwanted but transmitted to a plurality of recipient regardless of the intention of the recipients. Because a huge amount of spam messages are transmitted, the recipients are unnecessarily supposed to check the messages, the storage capacitor of a terminal or a receiving device unnecessarily is wasted, and those spam messages may include harmful information or correspond to virus.
Thus, mobile communication providers (or mobile carriers) try to prevent messages considered to be spam from being transmitted to a terminal or a receiving device of a recipient generally by installing a spam server within a communication network. When a particular message received by a person is reported as a spam for the reason that it is a spam message or when a particular message which includes a particular word or is received from a particular address so as to be classified as a spam message according to a search algorithm of a spam server, the spam server stores the content of the corresponding message, the address from which the corresponding message has been transmitted, personal information or the like of the person which has reported, or the like, in a spam box, and then interrupts or blocks a message transmitted from the same address or interrupts or blocks a message of the same content. The spam server may be separately installed or may be positioned with a message transmission server.
Once the message is classified as a spam message as a result from reporting or the like, if the same message is requested to be transmitted, it is classified as a spam message by the spam server and not transmitted to the terminal or the receiving device of the recipient. Thus, when a transmission-requested message is a spam message, the spam server must interrupt transmission of the spam message in advance, for which the spam server must have information regarding the spam message.
A typical method of collecting spam message information is that when a communication network subscriber first receives a spam message, he may report the spam message to the spam server, so that when the same spam message is requested to be transmitted later, the spam server interrupts it. Namely, when the person receives a message suspected as a spam message, it may report the received message to the spam server or report an address value of a server from which the message suspected as the spam message has been transmitted to the spam server, and accordingly, a database with respect to the spam message can be established in the spam server.
In addition, the government, mobile carriers, or a third communication security provider, and so on, may formulate a shared policy with respect to spam message information, based on which spam messages can be collectively managed. Namely, a government agency managing spam information and a company managing a spam server may share spam information each has collected to effectively process the spam messages with respect to a spam message selecting method or a spam message determining method or the like. The shared policy refers to operation or enforcement of a mutual agreement and configuration regarding sharing of spam information based on a policy, and in general, an original spam message reported as a spam and personal information who has reported the spam message are shared.
In terms of hardware, the spam server manages the reported spam message based on the externally shared policy in relation with the information regarding the spam message, and shares it with the terminal which has reported the spam message.
However, the related art has the following problems. That is, due to the consistent shared policy, when the person reports a spam message upon receiving it, personal information of the person may be shared against his intention between a different mobile carrier or a third communication security provider, and when the shared policy is altered, information about the altered shared policy is not provided to the person whenever it is altered, so the person cannot be aware of it.
Also, when the person reports the spam message to the spam server, he should transmit all the spam message text to the spam server, causing a problem that network traffic increases. Even in case where only an address value of a message transmission server is transmitted to report the spam message, the spam server should bring all the message text in order to check whether or not the reported message is a spam message, also increasing the traffic.
In addition, if a message is reported so as to be classified as a spam message but actually it is not a spam message, it is not transmitted to the terminal or the receiving device, making it impossible for the recipient to check that the message is not a spam message nor to check the corresponding message in a different manner.